Awful boastful children- why don't parents tell them

off? We have to avoid this one on the school run, he gallops up to tell us all about how he's a free reader and mine isn't, how he's so wonderful at well everything...he's so much bigger than my ds...it goes on and on...his mum just ignores it..

Today he was openly laughing to his mates about how my (other)ds didn't even know his own name (he's 2)

You'd think parents would tell them to stop it, I'm actually starting to find it embarrassing. They are 7 yrs old btw

I don't understand. You've never seen his mum but she was walking next to him and he's been to your house?

He sounds rather insecure to me and with a lot of social learning to be done. I agree with TrenteSix - maybe he does get told but it's just not going in yet. Poor kid - if you find it annoying then I'm sure the children will too and he'll need to keep on being told that this is not the way to make friends!

oh i hate this too. we had "gloat boy" at ds1's previous school and he was just awful.his mum just used to stand there and listen to him telling DS1 how much better he was than him and how he had this, that and the other and ds1 didn't...

i just said "that's lovely gloatboy" and talked to ds1 and tried to steer him away.it's really vile behaviour IMO and I wish parents would stop thinking it's just cute and "honest" and tell their kids how unkind it is

YANBU, my DS has just started reception and the boy of a mother who has befriended me constantly boasts about being the winner of made up games when we are walking home from school. i.e walking on a wall, running to a bin, throwing a conker. My DS gets called a looser by him- DS is completely unaware they are even in some Kind of competition. In the climbing the railings 'competition', DS got pulled off the wall by this boy because he thought DS was trying to beat him. The second time DS grazed himself and was crying. The mum told him off for that but with the boasting over winning she just remarks on How he loves to win. She once said that it was a great friendship the boys has as my DS didn't seem bothered about winning and that he seemed to like following her DS??IME you only have look at the parents' behaviour to see why some children are like this!

Just say 'That's lovely Fred' - it wont hurt you. If he's being mean just say 'That's not nice Fred, X is only 2, still very small' - it wont hurt him. Just because his parents aren't parenting him, it doesn't mean you can't stand up for your own kids.

"i don't really feel it's my place."I've always thought that this way of thinking creates problems. If children grow up thinking that only their parents are allowed to tell them off, surely they are more likely to have problems later on when they are admonished by teachers, employers, police etc.?

That's my excuse for telling unrelated children off and I'm sticking to it!